Mike Brown, Ezell Ford and Eric Garner are among the latest victims of the ongoing genocide of Black People in the United States of America. Every 28 hours in the United States law enforcement, vigilantes, or security guards extra-judiciously murder a Black person. It is imperative that we as a people act upon every tragedy and hardship inflicted upon us by the government and the corporations to address the systematic genocide of our people in a protracted, programmatic, and strategic way.

The United States of America, as both a state and a criminal enterprise, has proven time and time again throughout its entire 238-year history that where Black people are concerned, genocide is the order of the day. The mass extrajudicial killings of Blacks aren’t just the result of rogue police officers and crazed racist vigilantes; it is a state sponsored program of containment designed to keep the Black nation in a position of subservience and subjugation to the White settler colonial nation.

The United States Government and the vast reactionary sector of the settler colonial nation who’s interests it was designed to represent, has been engaged in a war on Afrikan people from the time of its inception to the present day. The United States Government continues to lose legitimacy through its actions against our people. Through its refusal to address the ongoing human rights violations against the Black Nation the United States has shown itself to be the perpetual facilitator of the suffering of the Black Nation.

We cannot and should not count on our enemies – like the courts, and other forces of the US government or transnational corporations – to protect us. We have to protect ourselves. Justice for Mike Brown, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner or any of the hundreds of other Black women, men and children extra-judiciously executed by vigilantes, security guards and police every year will never be found in the courtrooms of the United States. Marissa Alexander is potentially facing decades in prison for firing a warning shot to defend herself and her children against an abusive partner while George Zimmerman is walking free after murdering Trayvon Martin in cold blood. Even in cases where the verdict apparently is in favor of our people, like in the conviction of Theodore Wafer for the murder of Renisha McBride, these sorts of trials uphold the status quo by not addressing the root issues behind the oppression of our people in a systematic way. The United States Government does not even have the right to try these cases because it is the primary architect of the state of emergency and continuous crisis the Black Nation is forced to endure. We cannot afford to be distracted from the work that must be done to insure the survival of our people.

The rebellion our people are waging in Ferguson must be supported. But, spontaneous rebellions are not enough. The only way we are going to successfully defend ourselves from genocide is to build a massive social movement with self-determination and self defense as its central unifying principles. We need a coordinated movement that strategically takes on the systemic oppression and exploitation that prevent Black people from exercising self-determination and human rights. We have to defend ourselves if we want to survive.

We call on people around the country to support The Organization For Black Struggle based out of St. Louis, Missouri in their efforts to secure the resources to hire a full time organizer. They have been working since 1980 to fill the vacuum left by assaults on the Black Power Movement and have been providing critical leadership in support of the people’s struggle. To connect with The Organization For Black Struggle visit http://obs-onthemove.org/.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) believes that an essential part of our Movement for survival must be Self-Defense Networks.

We think there are two types of Networks that we have to build:

New Afrikan or Black Self-Defense Networks are alliances, coalitions, or united fronts of Black organizations whose purpose is to defend the New Afrikan or Black community from external (the police, FBI, white terrorist organizations, etc.) and internal (agent infiltration, intra-communal violence, etc.) threats to its safety and security.

People’s Self-Defense Networks are multi-national (or multi-ethnic and/or racial) alliances, coalitions, or united fronts whose purpose is to defend their communities against mutual enemies and threats and advance a common agenda based on shared interests, hopes, and aspirations.

Oppressed peoples and communities can and will only be secure in this country when they are organized to defend themselves against the aggressions of the government and the forces of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation.

The Every 28 Hours Campaign proposes a model for organizing:

The formation of Black Self-Defense Networks to defend our people and combat police terrorism. These Networks should seek to build Copwatch programs, engage in mass rights based education trainings for the community, serve as first responders to acts of Police Terrorism, and help coordinate mass resistance to these acts via mass mobilizations and direct action. These Networks should also be encouraged to engage in offensive campaigns, such as referendums to institute Police Control Boards.

The formation of People’s Self-Defense Networks to defend the lives and interests of all oppressed peoples’ and exploited classes against various forms of state terrorism. These People’s Self-Defense Networks would work as multi-national alliances to engage in a broad manner all of the tasks mentioned above to defend oppressed peoples and targeted communities, such as LGBTQ2GNC communities, against institutionalized racism, white supremacy, institutionalized sexism, patriarchy and state repression be it racial profiling, gender profiling, stop and frisk, mass incarceration, or mass deportations.

Waging campaigns for local referendums to institute Police Control mechanisms – i.e. community based structures that have the power to hire, fire, subpoena, and discipline the police on the local level. And waging massive, non-compliant campaigns of resistance employing BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanction) strategies and tactics on statewide, regional, and national levels.

Forming People’s Assemblies, on local, citywide, and regional levels to engage in program and demand development initiatives that will enable the people to engage in the broad implementation of people’s programs for self-defense and mutual aid.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and the Every 28 HoursCampaign seeks to strengthen organizing initiatives within Black or New Afrikan communities for self-defense, by presenting these initiatives with a comprehensive analytical framework and practical organizing tools to ground and unite them.

MXGM offers to Black and other oppressed communities three resources

1) Operation Ghetto Storm, a full report on the 2012 extra judicial killings;

2) Let Your Motto Be Resistance, an organizing handbook for self-defense; and 3) We Charge Genocide Again!, a curriculum for the Every 28 Hours Campaign, to further this objective

Links:

Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of Black People

My conception of Black Nation is this actually become a citizen of “Black Nation” how by setting up this actual state. Black state and anyone can join by becoming a citizen of this state Late 19th century Zionist had this same idea they now have the State of Israel Black State same way a place for all Blacks can go This would encompass all defense efforts but it would include offensive efforts such as using your human potential to build your life through Business. Knowledge however you concieve if your broke look around you opportunities abound solve problems like the rest of the world build create that’s what nations do that what the Black should do that’s my conception of Black Nation

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Dr. Mutulu Shakur, a member of the New African People’s Organization and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is one of the longest held political prisoners of war in USA federal detention at this time. He has been locked down and kept from his people for over 30 years since his capture on February 11, 1986. He was charged and convicted of freeing our Sister Assata Shakur from prison and master minding a 1981 expropriation of a Brinks armored truck.

Dr. Shakur was set for release on February 10, 2016 but his release never occurred. Just before this date he was informed that he would only be scheduled to get a hearing for parole on April 4, 2016.

BAMN News Service

BAMN (By Any Means Necessary) Grassroots News Service is the multi-platform news media for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the New Afrikan People’s Organization. This service will provide news, information, political perspective, and cultural and social commentary about issues and events impacting the freedom struggle of New Afrikans (Black People) colonized inside the United States Empire as well as Africans in the Diaspora and other oppressed people’s around the world.